He rubbed his forehead wearily. “Truer words were never spoken. I have been an avid student of Lola’s language ever since I met her. It has been a confounding, intolerably frustrating, yet admittedly also rewarding experience.”
Her heart made a small, treacherous flip. “Rewarding?”
He nodded gravely. “In those rare moments when I do, finally, grasp what you are saying, I find myself uncommonly relieved to be able to conclude that my sense of logic hasn’t deserted me, after all.”
“Oh!” Viola slapped his arm. “You are impossible! Truly!”
That brought an involuntary, pale smile to his face.
The door opened with a creak, and a group of women entered. The sexton stepped forward to light the candles at the altar. There was a service beginning soon.
Sebastian rose. “Let us return home.”
She stared at the hand he held out toward her.
He had changed in those nine years. So had she. She came to understand him marginally better now, even though she doubted she could ever fully understand that complex man.
Did she forgive him?
Truly, she did not know.
She knew this much: running from him back then had solved nothing. They would have to face them together: the dark shadows that haunted them both. And she no longer wanted to do this on her own. She no longer wanted to be lonely. She no longer wanted to yearn. She refused to wait. Not a single minute longer. Not a single second.
She took his hand, and he gripped it tightly.
He led her out to the carriage waiting in front of the church.
Home.
Chapter Sixteen
Neither of themhad spoken on the carriage ride home from the church, nor had they discussed it afterwards. She did not know what to make of that silence, whether it was peace or merely a truce. Perhaps he did not know either.
Possibly they understood each other a little better now. Possibly they had offered one another brief, vulnerable glimpses of their souls, though Viola was not certain it had brought them any closer. She had the nagging sense that some pieces of the puzzle were still missing, yet she could not guess what they might be.
Their days continued much as before, except that now, with the air at least somewhat cleared between them, she felt the anxiousness that had held her in its grip loosen. For the moment, that was sufficient.
He remained as reserved as ever, guarding his emotions, speaking of facts, never of sentiment.
It was truly most vexatious.
One night, after they had returned from one of Sebastian’s political dinners, she had drawn aside the curtains from her bedroom window to gaze at the moon, which was casting a misty-golden glow over the rooftops of London. The moon hadalways fascinated her, with its mysterious shadows and its ever-changing nature.
“Look,” she’d told Sebastian as he entered the bedroom, “isn’t this lovely?”
“What is?” He cast a cursory glance out of the window.
“This.”
“The night soil man emptying the privy pits?” Indeed, on the street, there was the figure of a lone man loading barrels of slop onto his cart.
“I mean the moon, of course.” Viola’s voice held an undercurrent of annoyance.
“Ah.” He paused, glancing at the moon as if seeing it for the first time.
Viola wound her shawl over her shoulder and crossed her arms, never leaving the moon out of her gaze. She sighed contentedly. “It makes me think of all sorts of fantastical things, the moon. It makes me quite whimsical and dreamy, bringing to mind the stories of the Arabian Nights that I used to read as a young girl, with flying carpets and genies and veiled princesses and sultans. Of magic and love.”
Since he did not deign to comment, she assumed he agreed.
